Background: Robin Bloch is a professionally-trained urban and regional planner with over 20 years of international professional/practitioner experience in urban, metropolitan and regional planning, spatial and land use planning, urban and regional economic development, and urban environmental planning and management. He is the Principal Consultant for ICF International. His work has incorporated the full spectrum of the project cycle from project identification and formulation through implementation, quality assurance and the monitoring and evaluation of individual projects and programs. He also has long-run international experience of policymaking and of urban, regional and economic development strategy and planning at local, regional and national government levels. Bloch is also a research affiliate at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town. Most recently he published “Dubai’s long goodbye” in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Currently, he is serving as Project Manager on the preparation of a Global handbook on Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the World Bank/Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery and the Disaster Risk Management Global Expert Team. The handbook provides an operational guide on how to effectively manage the risk of floods in rapidly urbanizing settings in the context of a changing climate.

Research Interests: Economic and regional development; politics and government; globalization.